From the moment it emerged as a railway town in the nineteenth century, Redhill attracted some remarkably sharp criticism. Visitors often complained about its rapidly built streets, brick shops and speculative housing. Yet many of the same writers were quick to praise the countryside that surrounded it.
The result is a curious contrast: contempt for the town itself, but admiration for the surrounding landscape.
The artist Samuel Palmer was one of the earliest and most memorable critics. Writing in the nineteenth century, he remarked:
'Those passing through the ghastly modern town of Redhill, partly a reclaimed swamp, can have no conception of the beauty of some of the scenery not too far distant'.
Palmer’s words neatly captured a theme that would recur for generations: the town disappointed him, but the surrounding countryside was inspiring.
A guidebook published in 1879 offered a fuller assessment. It acknowledged that the arrival of the railway had transformed Redhill into a prosperous residential centre for London businessmen seeking healthier surroundings and easy access to the capital. However, it was far less complimentary about the architecture that followed.
‘was of course speedily marked as a quarry by the speculative builder, and on the hill-top has grown up a populous railway town of hideous brick shops and habitations, and around it a belt of ostentatious villas, comfortable-looking mansions, and tasteful and ornate dwellings of many varieties, with a superabundance of builders' detached and semi-detached malformations.
The rapidly growing railway town, it complained,
From the hill and heathy common there are fine views, and about the lanes still umbrageous and pleasant walks. John Linnell, our veteran landscape painter, resides here. His studio has long been the fields of Redhill and Reigate, and the scenery so familiar on canvas is only a slightly idealized transcript of the natural landscapes of these localities. From the hills and heaths, he wrote, there were still magnificent views across the Weald and “umbrageous and pleasant walks”
Yet the writer immediately softened the blow by adding that the beauty of the neighbourhood has been little impaired.
Criticism did not end with the Victorians. In his 1945 history of Reigate, Hooper lamented that the growth of Redhill coincided with what he called “one of the most debased periods of English architecture.”
An even harsher verdict came from a Merstham schoolmaster recalling his childhood in 1921. He wrote:
‘I think I owe the fact that I have lived all my adult life in villages to the fact that as a child I lived in Redhill. It was a horrid little town, it offered no reason for its existence; nor had it any traditions, or any buildings of dignity and beauty. A crossroads provided an excuse for a hideous Market Hall, a bank which looked like a wing of Dartmoor prison, two streets of mediocre shops, and rows and rows of mean houses; al| huddled in a marshy basin'.
Such comments might seem unfair today, but they reflect a common Victorian and Edwardian prejudice against new railway towns. Unlike nearby Reigate, with its ancient history and picturesque buildings, Redhill had emerged rapidly during the nineteenth century and lacked the centuries-old character that many observers admired.
Yet the very qualities that its critics disliked were signs of its success. Redhill existed because the railway had made it an important transport hub, attracting businesses, commuters and new residents. The "modern town" that so offended some nineteenth-century commentators was, in fact, one of Surrey's most successful examples of Victorian growth.
A Handbook to the Environs of London, containing an account of every town and village, and of all places of interest, within a circle of twenty miles round London, in Two Parts - PART II, James Thorne FSA 1876.
A History of Redhill – Volume One, Alan Moore, 1999.